News,Sports,Events,Entertainment,Technology,Health,Inspiration,Fashion and Gossip!

23.10.12

Mothers sell their breast milk on Facebook

Women in the UK
and U.S are selling their breast milk online, despite serious concerns that it
could be harmful for babies.

Mothers are using
community forums, including Facebook, to make some quick cash out of their
extra milk.

Buying breast milk
is tempting to new parents struggling to express their own, as it provides
babies with better protection against illnesses and allergies compared to
formula

.

Websites such as
onlythebreast.co.uk appear to answer this need, saying: ‘Our discrete breastfeeding breast milk
classified system makes it possible to sell or buy breast milk in a clean,
private way.’

Donor mothers list
their milk under the age of their baby and if they can provide fresh milk on
demand. A search around the site reveals women from Essex to Newcastle are
offering it either fresh or frozen for around £1 per fluid ounce, while $2 per
ounce is the standard rate in the U.S .

The banks collect
expressed milk from pre-screened mothers who have a plentiful supply and a baby
under six-months old. It is then pasteurised before it is offered to nearby
hospitals.

But today doctors
in Germany warned new parents against privately obtaining their baby’s food through social networks such as
Facebook.

The Professional
Association of Pediatricians said that although breast is generally the best
option for newborns, mothers unable to breastfeed should not turn to the
internet.

‘Donors can be taking medicines or drugs,
have infectious illnesses like AIDS or Hepatitis,’ Wolfram Hartmann, president of the association, said.

‘Nobody can check whether the unknown mother’s milk is harmless for the particular child’ he warned, adding that the milk’s quality could also be affected during its
transportation.

The warning
follows a report by the online edition of German news weekly Der Spiegel and
the association’s own
research, it said.

Doctors agree that
breast milk is better than formula as it is packed with disease-fighting
substances. However, many women struggle to express enough milk and resort to
bottle feeding

It also warned
that a newborn’s nutritional needs differed from those of
a baby even of several weeks or months old.

‘The milk of a woman who already has an
older child does not contain the right nutrient composition for a newborn,’ it added, and said women who were unable
to breastfeed should use special powdered milk.

Although websites
such as onlythebreast.co.uk says families can take precautions such as asking
for medical documents showing the donor has a clean bill of health, this isn’t mandatory.

Professor Mitch
Blair, Officer for Health Promotion at the Royal College of Paediatrics and
Child Health, said: ‘We
encourage women to breastfeed where possible – as it can have real health benefits for both mother
and child.

‘For mothers who are unable to breastfeed,
but want to give their children breast milk, the NHS breast milk bank provides
a safe outlet for them to do so.

‘We would strongly recommend using these
official NHS milk banks rather than buying breast milk from other sources over
the internet.